Carved in relief from a working block consisting of three planks and possibly originally polychromed.

A section of the base, right of the cannon, is missing.

…; from the dealer E.E. de Visser, Bilthoven, with BK-1964-7-B, fl. 3,000 for both, to the museum, 1964

Object number: BK-1964-7-B

The original function of these two finely carved wooden reliefs bearing allegories of Victory (BK-1964-7-A) and Mars (War) (shown here) is uncertain. Given the subject, scale and distinctive arched form, they might have served as decoration on the doors of a princely or military form of transport, possibly a carriage. A maritime use seems unlikely, as carving on ships was commonly less detailed. Paint traces indicate the reliefs were perhaps originally polychromed.

The relief shows Mars, the Roman god of war, appearing beneath a tent-like canopy. Attired in pseudo-Roman raiment, he dons a large helmet or casque. Wielding a torch and sabre, he boldly strides over a cannon and an overturned drum. The accompanying relief shows Victoria, the Roman goddess of victory, also sitting beneath a tent-like canopy. She is dressed in classical robes, wearing a laurel wreath on her head. In her right hand she holds a branch of an orange or olive tree, in her left hand a bundle of arrows, a symbol of Concordia. With her feet she tramples Envy, whose hair consists of coiling snakes. The scene’s lower half is framed both left and right by heavy, upright leaf volutes.

Despite their high quality, the reliefs have received only minimal attention in the art historical literature. Leeuwenberg catalogued them as works by an anonymous Dutch master from around 1660. An attribution to the Flemish sculptor Rombout Verhulst (1624-1698) is nevertheless supported on stylistic grounds. From about 1650 on, Verhulst worked in Amsterdam alongside his fellow countryman, Artus Quellinus I (1609-1668). There he made a number of significant contributions to the sculptural decoration of the former Amsterdam town hall (the present-day Royal Palace at Dam Square), then under construction. Upon Quellinus’s return to his native Antwerp in 1665, Verhulst would take his place as the most important sculptor in the Dutch Republic, achieving notoriety primarily through richly decorated monumental tombs and epitaphs.

The fact that Verhulst also produced carvings in wood is less well known. Tangible reminders in this medium are a mantelpiece frieze depicting Putti Closing the Doors of the Temple of Janus he made for the Orange Hall at Huis Ten Bosch Palace,¹¹The mantelpiece was replaced in 1805-06 by the two current doors and the carved frieze was reinstalled above these doors, see B. Brenninkmeyer-De Rooy, ‘Notities betreffende de decoratie van de Oranjezaal in Huis Ten Bosch’, Oud Holland 96 (1982), pp. 133-90, esp. pp. 135-36, figs. 3 and 4; F. Scholten, ‘Rombout Verhulsts ivoren Madonna met Christus’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 51 (2003), pp. 102-17, fig. 16. and two unfinished wooden panels with crying children, which would have served as casting models for the bronze door in the Vierschaar (tribunal) of the former Amsterdam town hall.²²Amsterdam Museum, inv. nos. BA 2546 and BA 2547, see K. Fremantle and W. Halsema-Kubes, Beelden Kijken: De kunst van Quellien in het Paleis op de Dam/Focus on Sculpture: Quellien’s Art in the Palace on the Dam, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Royal Palace) 1977, figs. 85 and 86. Goossens suggestion that the wooden panels instead acted as the shutters of the window between the Burgemeesterskamer and the Vierschaar is incorrect since the panels are clearly left in an unfinished state. Furthermore, the composition of the small scale clay model with two rectangular sections below, on which the wooden panels with the crying putti are based, and a top section with to be open-worked ‘bars’ and a tree with a snake twined around it in the middle, is reused in the bronze door that was eventually executed (and is still in situ). Eymert-Jan Goossens, Heel en Al: Het iconografische programma van het Stadhuis van Amsterdam 1647-1665, (unpublished PhD-thesis, Utrecht University) Utrecht 2022, p. 173. Archival documents also cite several wooden painting frames carved by Verhulst.³³See P.J.J. van Thiel and C.J. de Bruyn Kops, Framing in the Golden Age: Picture and Frame in 17th-century Holland, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1984, add. 1. I 1654, for: ‘Two more carved frames carved by Verhulst, for thirty-six guilders’ (Noch twee gesneen lysten van Verhulst gesneen, voor ses en dartich gulden), and an entry made by the Governer-General of the Dutch East Indies, Ryklof van Goens, stating: ‘To Verhulst for frames 350 guilders’ (Aen Van der Hulst voor lysten 350 gulden). The present reliefs can be attributed to Verhulst based on numerous parallels found in the sculptor’s oeuvre for the figural types of Victoria and Mars and the treatment of the garment folds. Striking is the agreement between the Victoria and works by Verhulst such as the signed ivory Virgin and Child (BK-2002-28) and the garden statue of Prudentia (BK-B-92-A) in the Rijksmuseum’s collection, the marble reliefs of Silence and Venus in the former town hall of Amsterdam⁴⁴E. Neurdenburg, De zeventiende eeuwsche beeldhouwkunst in de noordelijke Nederlanden: Hendrick de Keyser, Artus Quellinus, Rombout Verhulst en tijdgenooten, Amsterdam 1948, figs. 146 and 155. (the present-day Royal Palace at Dam Square) and a marble statuette of Venus with Swan attributed to the sculptor’s name (private collection).⁵⁵F. Scholten, ‘Twee vroege statuettes van Rombout Verhulst’, Antiek 25 (1991), no. 7, pp. 345-53, figs. 1, 2 and 4. The author of said article no longer deems the attribution of the boxwood-carved Venus statuette (Heino, Hannema-De Stuers Fundatie) to Verhulst, as proposed in that same article, as tenable, see F. Scholten, ‘Rombout Verhulsts ivoren Madonna met Christus’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 51 (2003), pp. 102-17, esp. pp. 113-14. All display the same soft countenance with slightly plump arms, wearing the hair pulled-back in Verhulst’s characteristic style comprising dough-like strands and hanging braid(s), and attired in robes or cloths loosely draped around the body in a similar manner. The snake-plumed head of Envy beneath Victoria’s feet on the present relief is comparable to that of the Medusa far right on the escutcheon adorning the mantelpiece frieze at Huis Ten Bosch Palace. Mars’s raiment, including the billowing leather lappets of the skirt, is virtually the same as the suit of armour in the trophy of arms far left on the same frieze. Parallels for the god of war’s active pose can be observed in the procession of triumphant putti jostling with one another on the aforementioned relief. Verhulst possibly derived his figural type – the pseudo-Roman dress, short beard and compact, muscular body – from Quellinus’s marble relief depiction of Mars in the former Amsterdam town hall.⁶⁶E. Neurdenburg, De zeventiende eeuwsche beeldhouwkunst in de noordelijke Nederlanden: Hendrick de Keyser, Artus Quellinus, Rombout Verhulst en tijdgenooten, Amsterdam 1948, fig. 155 (the relief with Mars can be seen far left in the photograph).

The reliefs were likely made in the period 1650-58, when Verhulst was working as a (semi-) independent sculptor in Amsterdam. Given the iconography, it seems quite conceivable that these works were also commissioned by the Oranges, just as the wooden mantelpiece frieze in the Orange Hall. This is all the more so if the branch depicted in Victoria’s hand is in fact that of an orange tree, in which case the allegories referring to the Eighty Years War and the ensuing Treaty of Münster, thus marking the official recognition of the Republic of the Netherlands as a sovereign state.

Bieke van der Mark, 2024

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 324a, with earlier literature

B. van der Mark, 2024, 'attributed to Rombout Verhulst, Mars (War), Amsterdam, c. 1650 - c. 1658', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20035767